HO scale vehicles

[Gary S]

Any recommendations on brands of cars and light trucks to populate my parking lots? And a cheap source of acquiring them? Looking for anything from the 1970s and 1980s. Not necessarily looking for emaculately detailed stuff, but not looking for toy junk either.

[Russ Bellinis]

Walmart occasionally has ho scale die cast in the toy dept. They look like exactly the same models from the same company as the Model Power cars but at a price closer to $2.00 than $7.00 or $8.00.

[tomustang]

Walmart lost the rights to sell those cars, Malibu International got sued by model power for making their cars on the side and selling them.

[Charlie B]

Gary, It may be worthwhile to just visit Wal-mart, Dollar General, and Family Dollar stores in your area. I have seen many late model cars in these stores but none fit the era I model so I don't buy them, and darn it they are cheap too.
Charlie

[Gary S]

Thaks for the input, guys. Charlie, I'll give that a shot. There is a Family Dollar store right next door to work. I'll look tomorrow.

[tomustang]

Would suggest model power they are around $5

Sometimes at train shows you can find the 80's cars by monogram for less than $4


There was also Fresh Cherries, 70's cars that use to be sold at walmart along with the malibus, dont forget to check the clearance aisles there too

[Gary S]

Tomustang, are the model power cars fairly decent? I did see them online for fairly cheap.

[tomustang]

They are nice, have metal bodys, good amount of detail. I would say better than Atlas and Busch's plastic autos

[bdw9535]

Gary,

Check out the MB Klein website at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.modeltrainstuff.com">http://www.modeltrainstuff.com</a><!-- m -->. Under the ho scale trains heading there is a section for vehicles. Should find something of interest.

Bruce

[torikoos]

Another you might want to consider is Monogram (I have recently managed to get a few via evilbay, another reasonable source, although you end up bidding against collectors..)which are quite decent, but often have their head lights cast in the same plastic color as the rest of the car body (at least for the couple I just got), which I've never seen on an Atlas, let alone a Busch, but I'm not familiar with Model Power (don't own any).
The Busch, Herpa, Praline, Trident,Wiking and some other brands are often very detailed, although the older lines of Wiking are quite basic, and very european biased (As is the case with Busch and Herpa too, they're german brands after all).
Trident has an emphasis on military models, many WW2 era, but have some great looking Chevy Van/Sport Van in their range. Many are official cars (police etc), but there are several 'normal' versions too.
The time frame you mention is under represented at present, for the 70's to early '90's you'll almost certainly have to look at the 2nd hand market. New models being produced are often either current model years, or the 50's (which is of course a hugely popular era to model).

Koos

[Charlie B]

Another source for lots of filler cars cheap is wehonest. He lists 1000 for something like 89 bucks. They are all later models, and I don't know what selection comes in the package as I have never bought any. they are not exact HO, but 1/100 I didn't see any exact 1/87 listed. He is Chinese so you would probably be eliminating a middleman or too somewhere along the line.

[Sumpter250]

You might try here, for starters.... :
http://www.classicmetalworks.com/current...index.html

For some of their trucks, GCLaser has replacement bed kits, in laser cut wood. I've used both HO, and N scale truck bed kits, I have one NTrak module.

[tetters]

Thanks for that link Sump. That'll come in handy one day.

[odave]

No 70s layout should be without an AMC Gremlin



This is a Motor Max Fresh Cherries series - got it for $5.00 at my LHS. Not sure if they're being made anymore, I couldn't find 1:87 versions on the Motor Max website.

[Charlie B]

No 70s layout should be without an AMC Gremlin
].

Hey Buddy ! Where's the other half of your car?
Charlie